Mostly, they are good people wanting to do good work, but imo, public health agencies have become a para-intelligence services with explicitly political aims. There is a network of academics who see health and health information as a policy lever, and they have been out in force leveraging it through public health agencies during the pandemic.
I think they have discredited themselves over travel bans, vax passports, the objectively insane and poisonous rhetoric about the "hesitant," and arbitrary mandates with no accountability for those who enforced them. I don't think they can be trusted to be arbiters of science for people with a basic statistical reasoning skills and a belief in the existence of truth. The article articulates a more general and relevant sentiment, which is that the medical establishment has forfeited its public trust.
I have 12 years of postsecondary education in life science (medicine, health sciences, biochemistry and cancer/cell bio research at the graduate level) and this is completely, unequivocally false.
Sorry you couldn't do more with your background, but epidemiologists in public health just need a master's, and often just an undergrad with some stats skills. Many even have PhD's, but in policy areas, and not life sciences. There was not a single microscope let alone a biolab in the municipal public health units who were responsible for pandemic response and policy advice. Hospitals? Sure. But the people who were making pandemic policy were absolutely not analyzing samples.
I would go so far as to say that epidemiologist has become like software engineers and architects, but for public policy. They are teaching epidemiology in cultural studies programs. The real thing is as rigorous as infectious disease research, but if we are being unequivocal - the policy people are hacks.
This is the same partisan complaint no matter the topic. Everything is a nail since all you have is this one hammer.